


After

by Emma_Sea



Category: Original Work
Genre: Original Character Death(s), Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 00:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3875386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma_Sea/pseuds/Emma_Sea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>***</p><p>24 hours after reading your goddamn fic, DW, and I woke up crying. I can only hope this story might be true.</p><p>***</p>
    </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DiscontentedWinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [There Are No Wolves in California](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3868132) by [DiscontentedWinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter). 



> ***
> 
> 24 hours after reading your goddamn fic, DW, and I woke up crying. I can only hope this story might be true.
> 
> ***

The sky outside is the kind of vivid blue you haven’t seen since you were a girl. A single monarch butterfly zig-zags through the air, like it can barely stay aloft. Maybe it will lay eggs on the milkweed you planted in the community garden this morning. The bubbling trill of a curlew carries in through the open window, and you grasp the warm cotton comforter between your fingers. You were a little cold, before, but now delicious warmth seeps through you, like it’s an autumn afternoon and you’re lying in a sunbeam with cat and a book. You glance down at your hands – when did all those wrinkles get there, huh? Your hands always seemed to age first, and now look, the rest of you is all caught up.

The door opens, and a nurse slips quietly into the room, the tread of her shoes a muffled metronome as she straightens the room. “Sorry to keep you. It’s been a busy day. Mr. Malcolm down the hall passed on, and I had to help him first.”

She’s carrying a single vintage rose, petals thickly serried, and the heady scent of myrrh is drifting through the room. She folds your hands gently over your chest and tucks the rose between your fingers.

“Jock Malcolm was a fool who thought women should never have been elected president those three times, and who believed he was going to live in a bunch of fluffy clouds with winged babies after he died.”

The nurse smiles at you. “He did indeed believe that. But then, he’d only ever read the one book. I think you can do better, don’t you?” She arches her eyebrow as she tilts her head at the rows of bookcases lining three walls of your room, the Kindle (and back-up Kindle) by your bed, the game console and screen hanging on your wall. 

“Help me up? I only lay down for a little rest, and suddenly I was tired as a month-old moon.”

The nurse holds out her strong arms and steadies you as you sit up and swing your legs over the edge of the bed. You were all worn out before, but now you are ready for anything. Everything. 

You look down at your peaceful face on the pillow, eyes closed.

“Oh.”

“It’s okay,” says the nurse. Her hand on your shoulder brushes your bare neck, cool and dry and comforting. 

“What now?” you ask, and then you laugh and it’s the laugh you had when you were nine, and without care, and everything was possible. “I didn’t even know I’d be able to ask that.”

“You tell me, “ says the nurse. “Your life was filled with stories.”

“I get to pick _any of them_?”

She nods. “Any of them. All of them.”

You don’t even have to think. “Beacon Hills.”

The nurse grins and takes your hand, helping you to your feet. The light through the window is gaining in brightness, the room dissolving.

“And who do you want to be?”

Her voice is fainter now, the hydrogen static of the sunlight filling in all the cracks in her speech, grabbing you and lifting you up. Your feet no longer touch the polished floorboards.

“I have to choose?”

“I should have said, who do you want to be _first_?”

“How long have I got?”

“This universe ends in five billion years. Then we’ll turn the timer over and start again from the other side. There’s spacetime enough for all your stories, all your AUs.”

The light has you now, pulling you apart into the atoms of your narratives, and you steer yourself into the next page.

“Stiles.”

Like there was ever any doubt.


End file.
